Yet today, as the original punks sink into toothless middle age, the queen has emerged triumphant. Sir Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton, CBE (14 January 1904 18 January 1980) was a British fashion, portrait and war photographer, diarist, painter, and interior. A whos who of the 20th century, it contains the signatures of Greta Garbo, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dali and the Queen Mother, among many celebrities and luminaries who visited Beaton at home. Yet who remembers the significance of that passing controversy now? The queen has silently endured far worse in the way of drubbings and national crises in her 64 years on the throne, the death of Princess Diana in 1997 marking the rock bottom of her popularity. Cecil Beaton began to use a visitors book in 1930 when he moved to Ashcombe House in Wiltshire. With a strange synchronicity, 2016 happens to be the 40th anniversary of the start of the punk movement in London, during which Westwood was the clothing accomplice of the Sex Pistols, whose anti-Elizabeth protest anthem, “God Save the Queen” (“She ain’t no human being!”), at the time seemed an outrage. Reddish House in Wiltshire is the place where the great Cecil Beaton fell in love with gardening. “I really like the queen now-we used to think the royals represented British hypocrisy, but I’ve decided the royals are above it all, really.” These are the words of Dame Vivienne Westwood, possibly the world’s unlikeliest convert to the fan club of Elizabeth II, yet someone who happens to voice the sentiments of all who are in awe that the monarch of the United Kingdom is celebrating her 90th birthday today. Queen Elizabeth II, photo by Cecil Beaton.

Cecil beaton queen portrait